Viral mix-up briefly credits a rival institution with Eton’s own prize-winners
A Well-Meaning Post Goes Astray
A prominent Old Etonian’s congratulatory social media post celebrating this year’s crop of university offers briefly caused confusion online after the post, evidently drafted in some haste, tagged an entirely different and unrelated school in its opening line, crediting that institution’s pupils with achievements that were, in fact, entirely Eton’s own. The post was corrected within the hour, but not before it had been shared several hundred times, generating a wave of understandably confused replies from followers of both schools.
The Confusion Spreads Online
Pupils and staff at the mistakenly tagged school, who had no involvement in the achievements being celebrated, reportedly found the mix-up “mostly quite funny,” with one member of that school’s own communications team replying publicly to note, with evident good humour, that they would “happily take credit, but sadly cannot claim these particular results.” The Old Etonian responsible for the original post issued a swift correction along with what several observers called “a genuinely gracious apology,” attributing the error to drafting the post quickly between meetings and relying, fatally, on autocomplete to fill in the school’s name.
Eton’s Own Reaction
The school’s communications office, monitoring the situation, declined to make any formal statement, with one staff member noting privately that the whole affair had “resolved itself faster than most actual administrative errors we deal with internally.” Several current pupils, whose achievements were briefly misattributed, said they found the episode more amusing than upsetting, with one joking that it was “nice to know our results were good enough to be worth stealing, even by accident.”
A Reminder of Social Media’s Speed
The London Prat notes this is far from the first instance of a well-known figure’s hasty social media post causing brief confusion online, though the specific mix-up between two entirely separate schools has generated more amusement than most. The original post has since been corrected and remains up, now properly attributed, with a visible edit history that several commenters have described as “more entertaining than the achievement itself.”
No Lasting Harm Done
Both schools have confirmed there is no lingering ill will over the mix-up, with staff at the mistakenly credited institution going so far as to suggest the two schools’ respective communications teams “compare notes on autocomplete settings before the next round of results season,” a suggestion offered, all involved agree, entirely in jest. The Old Etonian responsible for the original mix-up has since promised, with evident relief, to proofread rather more carefully before his next celebratory post.
More from this section at Britain & World and coverage of the wider school world at The London Prat.
For further reading in a similar spirit, see The Onion and Private Eye.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
